Montenegro Eurovision Singer Hits Wrong Note Back Home

Montenegro hopes this year's striking representative for the Eurovision song contest, Slavko Kalezic, will make it through to the final, on Saturday May 13, in Kiev, Ukraine.

The singer and actor is scheduled to perform in the semi-final on May 9 with the song "Space", which has been praised in some international media for challenging "stereotypes about masculine and feminine beauty".   

But in conservative, homophobic Montenegro, the provocative performance and words of this self-styled "queen" have drawn torrents of criticism for apparently trampling on traditional values. Some have even called Kalezic a symbol of "Western decadence".

Wearing a billowing blue dress [at one point] as well as braided hair extensions in his Eurovision video, he has inevitably been compared to bearded Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst, who some in Montenegro saw as a gay propagandist.

Kalezic's reference to himself as a "queen" after he was chosen to represent Montenegro at Eurovision last December added more fuel to the critics. "I am born to win, I am your queen!" he said.

When his video for Eurovision was released in March, Kalezic warned that "everything that people expect, they won't get".

In an open letter posted on Facebook on March 14, he said he was not interesting in winning the favour of "primitive people drowning in their own ignorance and inability", adding:
"Negative comments only motivate me".

He also said that, "If he was alive, Njegos would truly support me," referring to claims that if the 19th-century prince bishop and poet, widely considered the father of the nation, were alive now, he would be ashamed of him.

Kalezic was already a known figure in Montenegro, as a member of the...